Sudan’s Protests

The Middle East Channel Editor’s Reader, #5 Last week’s outbreak of the largest wave of popular protests in Sudan in nearly two decades has opened up the possibility for change in one of the cruelest regimes in the Middle East and Africa. Few regimes are more deserving of popular challenge than that of Omar Bashir, ...

Sudanese wave their national flags as they gather outside the Defence Ministry in the capital Khartoum on April 20, 2012 to celebrate retaking the oil town of Heglig from South Sudanese forces. Border clashes between Sudan and South Sudan escalated last week with waves of air strikes hitting the South, and Juba seizing the north's Heglig oil hub on April 10. AFP PHOTO/ASHRAF SHAZLY (Photo credit should read ASHRAF SHAZLY/AFP/GettyImages)

The Middle East Channel Editor’s Reader, #5

Last week’s outbreak of the largest wave of popular protests in Sudan in nearly two decades has opened up the possibility for change in one of the cruelest regimes in the Middle East and Africa. Few regimes are more deserving of popular challenge than that of Omar Bashir, who should long since have been in custody in the Hague answering for his indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

The "Arab spring" is hardly needed to account for the protests in Khartoum, which has a long history of popular uprisings, but it certainly frames the perception and politics of what is unfolding. The current wave of protests were triggered by austerity measures, including cuts to food subsidies, in a tenuous political arena framed by the tensions surrounding the new South Sudan. Activists, especially students who had been trying to keep protests alive for over a year and a half, have moved creatively to embrace the online communications and organizational tactics made familiar by the Arab uprisings of the last year and a half. The tortuous path of popular struggles in Syria, Yemen and so many other Arab countries following early waves of enthusiasm should be a cautionary tale about overly high expectations. But Sudan’s rising protest movement in the face of a growing crackdown clearly merits the world’s attention.

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